Kyle and her husband moved to Brookfield in 1986. She became active in local politics and started blogging in 2004. Her focus is primarily on local issues but often includes state and national topics, too. Kyle looks at things from the taxpayers' perspective in a creative, yet down to earth way, addressing them from a practical point of view.

I don't know if the Aesop fable, The Ant and the Grasshopper
is still being taught in school as it was in my school days. It wouldn't seem
so based on who most younger voters chose in the last election.

In
the original story, basically the grasshopper character plays all
summer while the dutiful, responsible, self reliant ant works all summer, storing up
food and prepares his ant hole for winter.

When the snows come,
the ant is snug beneath the earth in his home, with plenty of food to
carry him through until spring. Now the grasshopper who played all
summer, didn't build a home, and didn't store food is cold. He knows he
will perish unless he gets help. He knocks at Mr. Ant's door and pleads
for a handout.

In the original story, the grasshopper receives a rebuke--no handout--for being irresponsible.

Disney
made a cartoon of the Ants and Grasshopper in 1934, and in that
version, the grasshopper is allowed to stay in the ant colony with the
provision that he play his violin to entertain the colony. He
presumably learns that he must make himself useful. Keep in mind that
1934 was during the throws of the Great Depression. Possibly this was
Disney's commentary on the RFC and WPA (public works projects), or that Walt felt it was insensitive to tell the starving to freeze to death?

A modern twist on the story was the Disney Pixar movie A Bug's Life.
That very popular movie showed how the mooching grasshoppers caused
great hardship on the ants, who had to work not only to store food for
themselves, but also to give to the raiding grasshoppers.

Flik, an
unconventional, outside the box thinking ant stars in the movie. When
the colony cannot fulfill the grasshopper's demands for their food
quota because of Filk's blunder, Flik has an epiphany : the
grasshoppers need the ants and there are more ants than grasshoppers!
If the ants outnumber the grasshoppers, why are they being bullied into
being the grasshoppers servants?

"Flik is...able to...rally the other ants, saying that
the grasshoppers depend on the extorted food for their own survival.
The entire colony swarms against the gang, driving away all but Hopper [the grasshoppers leader],
now obsessed with killing Flik."

In the end, Hopper, the leader of the ant's oppression, gets eaten by a bird!

A Bug's Life has a happy ending. The industrious ants are freed from their mooching, tyrannical grasshoppers. Their lives are made easier because now they only have to work for themselves!

But what are we ants, the hard working Americans who pay the taxes, going to do when the grasshoppers, those receiving some sort of handout from the government or those dependent on a make-work stimulus job, outnumber us? What are we going to do as Obama's programs reward citizens who exhibit irresponsible behavior and penalize those who are responsible?

President Obama and the Democrats are trying to get as many people dependent or beholding to the government as possible. Why? It keeps them in power.

The ants are starting to make noises like they are fighting back. The ant population is finding out more about these extravagant spending plans and they are not happy.(Obama's disapproval numbers doubled from 12 to 24 in his first month. I would suspect that number will grow as people find out just what is in these spending bills.)

Events like Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party might be a good place to start rallying ants.

"Government is promoting bad behavior. . . . Do we
really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages? This is America! How
many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage? President
Obama, are you listening? How about we all stop paying our mortgages!
It's a moral hazard."

All this took place on the air to the cheers of traders. Santelli
called for a new tea party [ Chicago Tea Party petition ] in support of capitalism. He's right.

Wisconsin ants (taxpayers) are also planning their own Tea Party on April 15th. I will post more about that when specifics are known. For now, just know that taxpayers are waking up. We had better do it quickly, because the grasshoppers are gaining on us!

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